Perhaps she uses her words as a mere tool for her redemption. Again, there’s a motive here – a clear and a thoughtful one. As she drives across the streets of Glasgow, talks to and victimizes single men to give in to her beauty and sultriness, she also takes interest in knowing about their personal lives as she lures them in. Subjectivity would be an understatement right from the opening scene, given she has a character that is layers deep, so to say, she doesn’t appear like what she really is and vice versa. The woman is an alien (although it is not clearly revealed to the viewers until at a later point in the movie) and presumably, she is harvesting humans for their organs. “Long Story Short” – The Premiseįrom a lay man’s point of reference, to start with, there’s a woman who, whilst driving relentlessly through the streets of Glasgow, Scotland, meets up men who are purportedly her victims. To summarize, there is not a single department that disappoints and the resultant is as good as a sum that is greater than its parts. The biker, for example, is a non-actor and a racer in his real-life. The mysterious biker, along with the other victims have been performed by non-actors and were shot candidly, meaning they aren’t your regular star performers but are real people with real-life problems. Her hourglass build has portrayed her in the most “human” form possible, yet her expressions and her performance have rendered her as an alien – layered deep, confused yet content, and with a mission vested within her mind. Scarlett Johansson has given a performance of her lifetime, perhaps her career’s best and one of the most underrated, wherein she occasionally speaks in a British accent, amused and excited to meet strangers (who’re mostly her victims eventually) and perhaps for the first time has done a little more show of “skin” than her previous works.
Mysterious, scary, quivering, and yet maintaining a singularity on its own, the music can be aptly termed as “otherworldly”. The score essentially signifies the “alienated” part (similar to what Hans Zimmer did in ‘Man of Steel’ to an extent, during the “terraformation” part) while maintaining the humanoid nature of the film’s premise, thus literally articulating the premise through notes. The score composed by Mica Levi is eerie and dramatic throughout the film, with higher and lower registers alternating with the necessary shrinks and the signature “roars”, but not to the extent of being monotonous or heavy on the ears. Incidentally, Glazer has also co-scripted the screenplay of ‘Under the Skin’ along with Walter Campbell, and many have called him the Stanley Kubrick of the modern era, with lesser ventures yet bearing more weight. While ‘Sexy Beast’ has often been regarded as one of the best British crime dramas, ‘Birth’ was greeted with mixed responses from critics and audiences alike. Like I had mentioned before, due credits also go to the English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer for the conceptualization of ‘Under the Skin’ from a cinematic point of view, who returned after his debut ‘Sexy Beast (2000)’ followed by ‘Birth (2004)’. Perhaps there’s much more to what can be seen and perceived than what is actually visible, ‘Under the Skin’ not only defies the tenets of regular cinematography and the power of a camera, it goes way beyond to redefine what abstraction is. Be it the opening sequence or capturing the scenic beauties of Scotland or the leading lady herself, the genius of British cinematographer Daniel Landin says it all. Unlike other horror or sci-fi movies, this one seems straight up from the 80s – abstract, polymorphic references, minimal use of CGI and most importantly, a scintillating cinematography. Here’s a peel by peel of ‘Under the Skin’ for your perusal, and needless to say, if you haven’t watched the movie yet, SPOILERS ALERT! Presenting to you, one such interpretation from a very mediocre mind. Deserving or not, here it is, ‘Under the Skin’ on a platter in front of us and it is but obvious to state here that the movie is highly subjective and open-ended on the outset and it has been left to a viewer’s discretion to interpret the movie in a way s/he wants to, to a very large extent. And moreover, it is a news to me that a movie that has made it to the list of BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century still bombed at the box office, maybe because, to put it rather bluntly, we don’t deserve a movie like ‘Under the Skin’ yet.
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